Home | Community | Message Board |
You are not signed in. Sign In New Account | Forum Index Search Posts Trusted Vendors Highlights Galleries FAQ User List Chat Store Random Growery » |
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.
|
Shop: Kratom Capsules for Sale Kratom Powder For Sale Isolated Cubensis Liquid Culture For Sale Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order CBD Concentrates Bulk Substrate Buy Bali Kratom Powder |
| |||||||
Clean the lense Registered: 05/11/03 Posts: 2,374 |
| ||||||
You're welcome. I do hope folks will check those links... some eye opening stuff there if you actually read.
| |||||||
spiritualemerg Stranger Registered: 03/28/07 Posts: 366 |
| ||||||
I am familiar with some of the material, i.e., Soteria House. Mosher is a terrific example of what "good" psychiatry can be.
Quote: Perry also had great success providing round the clock care to individuals undergoing a schizophrenic crisis. This quality of care however should not be confused with the type of care that is available in most hospital settings -- it doesn't mean being there to give a shot if someone gets scared. Rather, it meant simply being present and available to listen or talk if the identified patient requested as much. In both Mosher and Perry's experimental settings, this type of care was provided by paraprofessionals and yet was enormously more effective and helpful than that provided by those with years of clinical training. Love is powerful medicine. . -------------------- ~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. Blogs: Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Recovery | Voices of Recovery | A Jungian Approach to Psychosis
| |||||||
badchad Mad Scientist Registered: 03/02/05 Posts: 13,376 |
| ||||||
I don't think you would find a psychiatrist who wouldn't endorse psychotherapy and/or approve of it's use.
Unfortunately, not everyone has the means to obtain "round the clock care", and enter a "loving" institution where everyone holds hands and has "feel-good" time together. The real world, and real world psychosis simply doesn't work that way. If you cherry pick your subject population, selecting high functioning people who are experiencing schizophrenia (e.g. 80% employed, non-drug using, educated, and subjects with extensive social support) of course you will get high success rate. And here's the issue: Determine how much it costs to send someone to never never land, with round the clock care, where we all immerse ourselves in love and understanding. Surely this will help people, but who is going to pay for it all? -------------------- ...the whole experience is (and is as) a profound piece of knowledge. It is an indellible experience; it is forever known. I have known myself in a way I doubt I would have ever occurred except as it did. Smith, P. Bull. Menninger Clinic (1959) 23:20-27; p. 27. ...most subjects find the experience valuable, some find it frightening, and many say that is it uniquely lovely. Osmond, H. Annals, NY Acad Science (1957) 66:418-434; p.436
| |||||||
Kickle Wanderer Registered: 12/16/06 Posts: 17,947 Last seen: 2 hours, 8 minutes |
| ||||||
Quote: Everything requires financial backing. Artists, institutions, and psychiatrists alike. Certainly without someone who believed in the idea, it would never get off the ground. From my point of view, when meds became a major hot topic, and the money really started to flow in, over use became an issue. But before then, it was people doing what people felt was best. Like the news reporter, he was using the money to continue to write his story. It was when he finally had a conflict that he got out. If a psychiatrist believs that medicine is the best way, there is no conflict for them to promote it. And even less reason for them to receive funding to learn more about it. However, I can see the argument that because it started based on this, it was destined to be reliant on it. And perhaps that is true, now drug companies have such a foothold that nothing can be done, and thusly, it did start back with the initial fundings. None the less, even if that is the case, I can not fault the psychiatrists, as given their situation, I probably would have done the same thing. Without money, research sits dead in the water. Quote: Quote: They are free to search for alternatives, and as your links, which thank you for posting, point out; exist. The story of the lady is a good example of what a person who has the personality to accomplish the changes, can. Not everyone is that lucky. Psychiatry itself might be in a bind right now, but the rest of the population isn't. There are alternatives to meds in every direction I look. Speaking not from an article, but my own personal experience, there are several situations in which I've been faced with situations of mental health. My girlfriend, whom I've been dating for roughly a year, admitted to me that she has been depressed (suicidal) since middle school. I worked with her for quite some time about what we should do to help her with this problem. The end result was a psychologist who, luckily, was very very good. I went along with her for her first meeting, and observed. Eventually the conversation of anti-depressants came up, and the psychologist mentioned her distaste for meds in general. However, with depression, progress is best made when an individual isn't in a slump at all times. Being on a med, and then undergoing psychotherapy, raises the progress that can be made. While the study about treating someone humanely having profound effects may have been true, I have found it certainly doesn't work with my girlfriend. Her family is very loving and supportive, as I have met them several times and watched the interactions. I myself love her, and support her at all hours of the day. But there are moments when she will just snap into a dark spell. Nothing anyone says will have an impact. Humor is about as close as I can get. It will receive a smile, perhaps a laugh, but it is immediately back down. Now, faced with this kind of a scenario, it is not difficult for me to see how using meds to raise that base level of emotion is very appealing. None the less, it is the individuals choice. My girlfriend opted to try and push her way through herself, and I'm very proud of her for that. Excercise is a key, so I try to offer support and take her out hiking or running as often as I can. Every 2 or 3 weeks she goes to see the therapist, and does some psychotherapy. Advances have been made, but she still has her depression. I don't know if she will ever get over it, but all that I know how to do, is hope. It was, and still is, however, nice to know that should things go downhill, the meds are an option. I would rather have my girlfriend on meds, than commit suicide. That is really the bottom line for me, and I think it is also the bottom line for a lot of people. Talking about these issues is one thing, but living them is another all together. -------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
| |||||||
Clean the lense Registered: 05/11/03 Posts: 2,374 |
| ||||||
Thanks for sharing This is certainly a deep issue, goes right to the heart of what it means to be alive and human.
| |||||||
Kickle Wanderer Registered: 12/16/06 Posts: 17,947 Last seen: 2 hours, 8 minutes |
| ||||||
No problem. I liked this thread, maybe I should frequent this board more often. Very level headed discussion here.
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
| |||||||
spiritualemerg Stranger Registered: 03/28/07 Posts: 366 |
| ||||||
badchad: Unfortunately, not everyone has the means to obtain "round the clock care", and enter a "loving" institution where everyone holds hands and has "feel-good" time together.
Part of the reason they don't have the means of doing so is because these kinds of environments are simply not available in this culture. The second thing you have to look at is cost -- both Mosher and Perry demonstrated that the costs of the type of care offered by Soteria House and Diabasis were less expensive than that offered in hospital. The third aspect you have to consider is recovery. Mosher produced recovery; Perry produced recovery; Seikkula is currently producing recovery -- the short terms costs of producing "cure" may be more intensive at the start but they pale in comparison to the societal burden of long-term chronicity. The real world, and real world psychosis simply doesn't work that way. Back up. Read my post where I note that I am someone who has gone through a schizophrenic break. Continue reading until you reach the part about full-recovery. I know how real world psychosis works and I know full recovery is possible for a lot more than just me. If you're sincerely interested in learning more, I have two blogs packed full of information. . -------------------- ~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. Blogs: Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Recovery | Voices of Recovery | A Jungian Approach to Psychosis Edited by spiritualemerg (05/08/07 04:28 PM)
| |||||||
StickyWater Stranger Registered: 06/09/05 Posts: 1,680 |
| ||||||
Edited by StickyWater (04/29/08 01:09 PM)
| |||||||
SneezingPenis ACHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!111! Registered: 01/15/05 Posts: 15,427 Last seen: 6 years, 10 months |
| ||||||
Quote: good debating skills there. CCHR was formed by Scientologists, but is not funded by Scientology. Your unprofessional opinion regarding the mental status of a group that encompasses millions of people is not only immature, but based in complete ignorance of the subject at hand. Sure, you can keep quoting clambake and xenu.org but it has nothing to do with this discussion, nor does it have any credible information.
| |||||||
SneezingPenis ACHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!111! Registered: 01/15/05 Posts: 15,427 Last seen: 6 years, 10 months |
| ||||||
also, one of those links had a great line in it.
" it only takes one person to have a physical disease, but it takes two people to have a mental one..." but if anyone is interested, here is a year old thread that has a huge amount of research hours poured into it. It shows the political ties, and how Big Pharma got the stranglehold on America.My Thesis: Why Americans believe Depression and ADD exist.
| |||||||
Sterile mushroom lover Registered: 03/16/01 Posts: 2,535 Loc: under the Amanita Last seen: 5 months, 28 days |
| ||||||
Quote: -------------------- The Source Of The Force Is The Power Of The Mind "if you don't like what you're doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove." - timothy leary" Anno: "-I can do anything with those clouds!" Annos Tek
| |||||||
SneezingPenis ACHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!111! Registered: 01/15/05 Posts: 15,427 Last seen: 6 years, 10 months |
| ||||||
here is one more link with some very good discussion in it.
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ regarding the crimes of the FDA, as well as financial ties of members on advisory panels and the money spent on lobbying by each company.
| |||||||
spiritualemerg Stranger Registered: 03/28/07 Posts: 366 |
| ||||||
psilocyberin -- I have a hunch I may know you from another cyberspace and time. I might be wrong, but if I am, I'm pleased to meet you now.
. -------------------- ~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. Blogs: Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Recovery | Voices of Recovery | A Jungian Approach to Psychosis Edited by spiritualemerg (05/08/07 05:20 PM)
| |||||||
SneezingPenis ACHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!111! Registered: 01/15/05 Posts: 15,427 Last seen: 6 years, 10 months |
| ||||||
I have been psilocyberin for atleast 7 years on anything internet related. It is possible.
| |||||||
spiritualemerg Stranger Registered: 03/28/07 Posts: 366 |
| ||||||
Hey StickyWater, thanks for joining into the discussion! You bring up some very good points, some of which I'm going to counter but before I do, I'd like to clarify a few things.
The first is that I have different expectations of different people in regard to the topic of severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. When it comes to the average person... most of them have never seen, spoken with, or related to someone diagnosed with schizophrenia. As a result, they tend to form their impressions of "schizophrenics" via media reports and Hollywood screenplays. I have a different expectation of professionals within the mental health field. They -- after all -- are often the only advocate an individual may have. In spite of this, many professionals have never seen, spoken with, or related to someone diagnosed with schizophrenia. This is especially true of those in the field of psychology; they tend to leave "the schizophrenics" to the psychiatrists because they operate from the belief that psychosis requires medication, a prescription privilege that most psychologists do not have. As a result, they tend to form the same impressions of "schizophrenics" as the average person but if they perpetuate those myths, it's more damaging because it carries the weight of educational credentials behind it. Anyway, that describes a little bit of my approach to such matters. StickyWater: There was a guy living down the street from me in a halfway house where I used to live, he was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder and paranoid schitzophrenia. There is a misperception there that I feel it's necessary to address, although I recognize that you didn't put it there. I'll borrow on some words to do so... Quote: Nicest guy you'll ever meet, just not very bright and almost child-ish in his level of trust, and the way he understood the world. Some of the nicest, kindest, wisest, most compassionate, and most wounded people I've ever met have been diagnosed schizophrenics. I realize that there is a subset of those with this disorder who are violent and act out, but they are very much in the minority. Most schizophrenics are not violent; if anything, they are too empathic. I associate this with the lack of ego barriers. It can be very difficult for a person undergoing this experience to determine where they end and the other begins; as a result, if you are in pain, they tend to feel it. This depth of empathic intimacy does not invite violence or brutality. I mean he says and does weird things, but it's because he never mentally matured, not because he's sick. He didn't break a store window because he was sick, he broke it because he was angry at the guy and simply doesn't know how to react to it. He throws a fit, like a kid, then he goes and sits on a bench looking really grumpy for about an hour. According to mainstream psychiatry, all forms of schizophrenia are rooted in a biological counterpart. Yet, if you talk to these people and you're open enough to hear what they have to say -- to the extent that they'll trust you enough to tell you -- it doesn't take much to figure out why they "went crazy". Schizophrenia is a very human experience; a background in trauma theory and depth psychology can be helpful. But if you actually talk to him, and don't just look down on him when you notice he's slow, and don't get annoyed when he keeps asking for cigarettes or change (I mean he's pretty much homeless, he can't help it) he's the nicest guy ever. Except when he goes to the hospital for his meds then disappears for 3 days, comes back still fucked up and rolls around on the road talking to the sun. What you are describing is a condition of chronicity and that's what disturbs and saddens me, because I believe that chronicity is created by the societal response and treatment of those deemed to be schizophrenic in this society. The recovery rate from schizophrenia is as high as 90% in some cultures. Here in the west, schizophrenics are too often told that they are incurable and that's what they become. This is not the way it needs to be. I'm going to close this post with a piece of music that was shared with me by a young man who was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. I wandered into his blog more than a year ago. I wish I could share that space with the rest of you because it was brilliant, funny, raw, beautiful, and so very fucking human -- Where others saw a schizophrenic, I saw a mystic... The following song featured there roughly a year ago. It doesn't apply anymore because that individual has recovered and moved on. What he did is possible for most every "schizophrenic" out there. Quote of the Hour: A schizophrenic is no longer schizophrenic when they feel understood by someone else. -- Carl Jung Music of the Hour: Creep See also: . -------------------- ~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. Blogs: Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Recovery | Voices of Recovery | A Jungian Approach to Psychosis Edited by spiritualemerg (05/08/07 10:19 PM)
| |||||||
DirtMcgirt in a pinch Registered: 10/20/04 Posts: 2,213 Loc: city of angels |
| ||||||
this is mostly responding to Kickle from my post in the pub yesterday, but i'll throw it in this thread... When humans first started dabbling in physics and chemistry and astronomy etc we had little in the way to measure what we were studying. We couldn't minimize variables well and therefore we could not understand the nature of cause and effect with whatever it was we were studying. Alot of this pre-science is referred to as alchemy SO alot of very intelligent people thought up all sorts of intelligent and creative things to explain the world around them but in scientific hindsight, now that we understand things better, it sounds foolish and often absurd. This is what is happening with psychology/psychiatry. Alot of intelligent people are saying alot of creative and insightful things about the human mind but the vast majority of it will all come out to have little more scientific merit than astrology. We are on to something but we are way, way, off in my unprofessional and slightly educated opinion. Its the modern day alchemy It is because there is no baseline or "off" measurements for human behavior/emotion. There is no objective perspective of humans, available to humans. In fact I think the least likely source of an objective perspective of a human is another human who is receiving external (and internal) rewards for giving that perspective. Money has always had the power to subtlety pervert even the most altruistic mind I even believe many of those dedicated to psychology/psychiatry rely on it to support their deterministic leaning perspective of reality (you could say the inverse of that I suppose. Saying no to psychology is like saying yes to free will). Thats why I believe psychology/psychiatry more a philosophic study than a scientific/medical one. There is no way to even sorta accurately recreate social, biochemical, and physical environments; the environments of a mental state . Isn't that ability to recreate like the foundation of the scientific method? I suppose brain chemistry could be referred to as empirical, but whose to say if these are the measurements caused by the problem (emotion/behavior) or are causing the problem or really have little to do with any of it? Right now we trying to turn lead into gold by guessing, throwing knives blindfolded, and chanting voodoo curses. -------------------- "And we, inhabitants of the great coral of the Cosmos, believe the atom (which still we cannot see) to be full matter, whereas, it too, like everything else, is but an embroidery of voids in the Void, and we give the name of being, dense and even eternal, to that dance of inconsistencies, that infinite extension that is identified with absolute Nothingness and that spins from its own non-being the illusion of everything." Edited by DirtMcgirt (05/08/07 08:32 PM)
| |||||||
spiritualemerg Stranger Registered: 03/28/07 Posts: 366 |
| ||||||
A Brief History of the Treatment of "Madness"
His belief -- that the insane were animal-like in kind -- reflected prevailing conceptions about the nature of man. The great English scientists and philosophers of the seventeenth century -- Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, John Locke, and others—had all argued that reason was the faculty that elevated humankind above the animals. This was the form of intelligence that enabled man to scientifically know his world, and to create a civilized society. Thus the insane, by virtue of having lost their reason, were seen as having descended to a brutish state. They were, Willis explained, fierce creatures who enjoyed superhuman strength. “They can break cords and chains, break down doors or walls … they are almost never tired … they bear cold, heat, watching, fasting, strokes, and wounds, without any sensible hurt.” The mad, he added, if they were to be cured, needed to hold their physicians in awe and think of them as their “tormentors.” Quote: A medical paradigm for treating the mad had been born, and eighteenth-century English medical texts regularly repeated this basic wisdom. In 1751, Richard Mead explained that the madman was a brute who could be expected to “attack his fellow creatures with fury like a wild beast” and thus needed “to be tied down and even beat, to prevent his doing mischief to himself or others.” Thomas Bakewell told of how a maniac “bellowed like a wild beast, and shook his chain almost constantly for several days and nights … I therefore got up, took a hand whip, and gave him a few smart stripes upon the shoulders… He disturbed me no more.” Physician Charles Bell, in his book Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting, advised artists wishing to depict madmen “to learn the character of the human countenance when devoid of expression, and reduced to the state of lower animals.” Like all wild animals, lunatics needed to be dominated and broken. The primary treatments advocated by English physicians were those that physically weakened the mad—bleeding to the point of fainting and the regular use of powerful purges, emetics, and nausea-inducing agents. All of this could quickly reduce even the strongest maniac to a pitiful, whimpering state. William Cullen, reviewing bleeding practices, noted that some advised cutting into the jugular vein. Purges and emetics, which would make the mad patient violently sick, were to be repeatedly administered over an extended period. John Monro, superintendent of Bethlehem Asylum, gave one of his patients sixty-one vomit-inducing emetics in six months, including strong doses on eighteen sucessive nights. Mercury and other chemical agents, meanwhile, were used to induce nausea so fierce that the patient could not hope to have the mental strength to rant and rave. “While nausea lasts,” George Man Burrows advised, “hallucinations of long adherence will be suspended, and sometimes be perfectly removed, or perhaps exchanged for others, and the most furious will become tranquil and obedient.” It was, he added, “far safer to reduce the patient by nauseating him than by depleting him.” A near-starvation diet was another recommendation for robbing the madman of his strength. The various depleting remedies—bleedings, purgings, emetics, and nausea-inducing agents—were also said to be therapeutic because they inflicted considerable pain, and thus the madman’s mind became focused on this sensation rather than on his usual raving thoughts. Blistering was another treatment useful for stirring great bodily pain. Mustard powders could be rubbed on a shaved scalp, and once the blisters formed, a caustic rubbed into the blisters to further irritate and infect the scalp. “The suffering that attends the formation of these pustules is often indescribable,” wrote one physician. The madman’s pain could be expected to increase as he rubbed his hands in the caustic and touched his genitals, a pain that would enable the patient to “regain consciousness of his true self, to wake from his supersensual slumber and to stay awake.” All of these physically depleting, painful therapies also had a psychological value: They were feared by the lunatics, and thus the mere threat of their employment could get the lunatics to behave in a better manner. Together with liberal use of restraints and an occasional beating, the mad would learn to cower before their doctors and attendants. “In most cases it has appeared to be necessary to employ a very constant impression of fear; and therefore to inspire them with the awe and dread of some particular persons, especially of those who are to be constantly near them,” Cullen wrote. “This awe and dread is therefore, by one means or other, to be acquired; in the first place by their being the authors of all the restraints that may be occasionally proper; but sometimes it may be necessary to acquire it even by stripes and blows. The former, although having the appearance of more severity, are much safer than strokes or blows about the head.” Such were the writings of English mad-doctors in the 1700s. The mad were to be tamed. But were such treatments really curative? In the beginning, the mad-doctors were hesitant to make that claim. But gradually they began to change their tune, and they did so for a simple reason: It gave them a leg up in the profitable madhouse business. In eighteenth-century England, the London asylum Bethlehem was almost entirely a place for the poor insane. The well-to-do in London shipped their family lunatics to private madhouses, a trade that had begun to emerge in the first part of the century. These boarding houses also served as convenient dumping grounds for relatives who were simply annoying or unwanted. Men could get free from their wives in this manner—had not their noisome, bothersome spouses gone quite daft in the head? A physician who would attest to this fact could earn a nice sum—a fee for the consultation and a referral fee from the madhouse owner. Doctors who owned madhouses mad out particularly well. William Battie, who operated madhouses in Islington and Clerkenwell, left an estate valued at between £100,000 and £200,000, a fabulous sum for the time, which was derived largely from this trade. Even though most of the mad and not-so-mad committed to the private madhouses came from better families, they could still expect neglect and the harsh flicker of the whip. As reformer Daniel Defoe protested in 1728, “Is it not enough to make any one mad to be suddenly clap’d up, stripp’d, whipp’d, ill fed, and worse us’d?” In the face of such public criticism, the madhouse operators protested that their methods, while seemingly harsh, were remedies that could restore the mad to their senses. The weren’t just methods for managing lunatics, but curative medical treatments. In 1758, Battie wrote: “Madness is, contrary to the opinion of some unthinking persons, as manageable as many other distempers, which are equally dreadful and obstinate.” He devoted a full three chapters to cures. In 1774, the English mad trade got a boost with the passage of the Act for Regulating Madhouses, Licensings, and Inspection. Thenew law prevented the commitment of a person to a madhouse unless a physician had certified the person as insane (which is the origin of the term “certifiably insane”). Physicians were now the sole arbiters of insanity, a legal authority that mad the mad-doctoring trade more profitable than ever. Then, in 1788, King George III suffered a bout of madness, and his recovery provided the mad-doctors with public proof of their curative ways. Francis Willis, the prominent London physician called upon by the queen to treat King George, was bold in proclaiming his powers. He boasted to the English Parliament that he could reliably cure “nine out of ten” mad patients and that he “rarely missed curing any [patients] that I had so early under my care: I mean radically cured.” On December 5, 1788, he arrived at the king’s residence in Kew with an assistant, three keepers, a straight waistcoat, and the belief that a madman needed to be broken like a “horse in a manège.” King George III was so appalled by the sight of the keepers and the straight waistcoat that he flew into a rage—a reaction that caused Willis to immediately put him into the confining garment. As was his custom, Willis quickly strove to assert his dominance over his patient. When the king resisted or protested in any way, Willis had him “clapped into the straight-waistcoat, often with a band across his chest, and his legs tied to the bed.” Blisters were raised on the king’s legs and quickly became infected, the king pleading that the pustules “burned and tortured him”—a complaint that earned him yet another turn in the straight waistcoat. Soon his legs were so painful and sore that he couldn’t walk, his mind now wondering how a “king lay in this damned confined condition.” He was repeatedly bled, with leeches placed on his templates, and sedated with opium pills. Willis also surreptitiously laced his food with emetics, which made the king so violently sick that, on one occasion, he “knelt on his chair and prayed that God would be pleased either to restore Him to his Senses, or permit that He might die directly.” In the first month of 1789, the battle between the patient and doctor became ever more fierce. King George III—bled, purged, blistered, restrained, and sedated, his food secretly sprinkled with a tartar emetic to make him sick—sought to escape, offering a bribe to his keepers. He would give them annuities for life if they would just free him from the mad-doctor. Willis responded by bringing in a new piece of medical equipment—a restraint chair that bound him more tightly than the straight waistcoat—and by replacing his pages with strangers. The king would no longer be allowed the sight of familiar faces, which he took as evidence “that Willis’s men meant to murder him.” In late February, the king made an apparently miraculous recovery. His agitation and delusions abated, and he soon resumed his royal duties. Historians today believe that King George III, rather than being mad, suffered from a rare genetic disorder, called porphyria, which can lead to high levels of toxic substance in the body that cause temporary delirium. He might have recovered more quickly, they believe, if Willis’s medical treatment had not so weakened him that they “aggravated the underlying condition.” But in 1789, the return of the king’s sanity was, for the mad-doctors, a medical triumph of the most visible sort. In the wake of the king’s recovery, a number of English physicians raced to exploit the commercial opportunity at hand by publishing their novel methods for curing insanity. Their marketing message was often as neat as a twentieth century sound bite: “Insanity proved curable.” One operator of a madhouse in Chelsea, Benjamin Faulkner, even offered a money-back guarantee: Unless patients were cured within six months, all board, lodging, and medical treatments would be provided “free of all expence whatever.” The mad trade in England flourished. The number of private madhouses in the London area increased from twenty-two in 1788 to double that number by 1820, growth so stunning that many began to worry that insanity was a malady particularly common to the English. In this era of medical optimism, English physicians—and their counterparts in other European countries—developed an ever more innovative array of therapeutics. Dunking the patient in water became quite popular—a therapy intended both to cool the patient’s scalp and to provoke terror. Physicians advised pouring buckets of water on the patient from a great height or placing the patient under a waterfall; they also devised machines and pumps that could pummel the patient with a torrent of water. The painful blasts of water were effective “as a remedy and a punishment,” one that made patients “complain of pain as if the lateral lobes of the cerebrum were split asunder.” The Bath of Surprise became a staple of many asylums: The lunatic, often while being led blindfolded across a room, would suddenly be dropped through a trapdoor into a tub of cold water—the unexpected plunge hopefully inducing such terror that the patient’s senses might be dramatically restored. Cullen found this approach particularly valuable: Quote: The most extreme form of water therapy involved temporarily drowning the patient. This practice had its roots in a recommendation made by the renowned clinician of Leyden, Hermann Boerhaave. “The greatest remedy for [mania] is to throw the Patient unwarily into the Sea, and to keep him under Water as long as he can possibly bear without being quite stifled.” Burrows, reviewing this practice in 1828, said it was designed to create “the effect of asphyxia, or suspension of vital as well as of all intellectual operations, so far as safety would permit.” Boerhaave’s advice led mad-doctors to concoct various methods for stimulating drowning such as placing the patient into a box drilled with holes and then submerging it underwater. Joseph Guislain built an elaborate mechanism for drowning the patient, which he called “The Chinese Temple.” The maniac would be locked into an iron cage that would be mechanically lowered, much in the manner of an elevator car, into a pond. “To expose the madman to the action of this device,” Guislain explained, “he is led into the interior of this cage: one servant shutsthe door from the outside while the other releases a break which, by this maneuver, causes the patient to sink down, shut up in the cage, under the water. Having produced the desired effect, one raises the machine again.” The most common mechanical device to be employed in European asylums during this period was a swinging chair. Invented by Englishma Joseph Mason Cox, the chair could, in one fell swoop, physically weaken the patient, inflict great pain, and invoke terror—all effects perceived as therapeutic for the mad. The chair, hung from a wooden frame, would be rotated rapidly by an operator to induce in the patient “fatigue, exhaustion, pallor, horripilatio [goose bumps], vertigo, etc,” thereby producing “new associations and trains of thoughts.” In the hands of a skilled operator, able to rapidly alter the directional motion of the swing, it could reliably produce nausea, vomiting, and violent convulsions. Patients would also involuntarily urinate and defecate, and plead for the machine to be stopped. The treatment was so powerful, said one nineteenth-century physician, that if the swing didn’t make a mad person obedient, nothing would. Once Cox’s swing had been introduced, asylum doctors tried many variations on the theme—spinning beds, spinning stools, and spinning boards were all introduced. In this spirit of innovation and medical advance, one inventor built a swing that could twirl four patients at once, at revolutions up to 100 per minute. Cox’s swing and other twirling devices, however, were eventually banned by several European governments, the protective laws spurred by a public repulsed by the apparent cruelty of such therapeutics. This governmental intrusion into medical affairs caused Burrows, a madhouse owner who claimed that he cured 91 percent of his patients, to complain that an ignorant public would “instruct us that patient endurance and kindliness of heart are the only effectual remedies for insanity!” Even the more mainstream treatments—the Bath of Surprise, the swinging chair, the painful blistering—might have given a compassionate physician like Rush pause. But mad-doctors were advised not to let their sentiments keep them from doing their duty. It was the highest form of “cruelty,” one eighteenth-century physician advised, “not to be bold in the Administration of Medicine.” Even those who urged that the insane, in general, should be treated with kindness, saw a need for such heroic treatments to knock down mania. “Certain cases of mania seem to require a boldness of practice, which a young physician of sensibility may feel a reluctance to adopt,” wrote Thomas Percival, setting forth ethical guidelines for physicians. “On such occasions he must not yield to timidity, but fortify his mind by the councils of his more experienced brethren of the faculty.” Source: Robert Whitaker (2002), Mad in America, pp. 6–13. . -------------------- ~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. Blogs: Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Recovery | Voices of Recovery | A Jungian Approach to Psychosis
| |||||||
spiritualemerg Stranger Registered: 03/28/07 Posts: 366 |
| ||||||
Continued...
For hospitals, the main drawback with insulin-coma therapy was that it was expensive and time-consuming. By one estimate, patients treated in this maner received “100 times” the attention from medical staff as did other patients, and this greatly limited its use. In contrast, metrazol convulsive therapy, which was introduced into U.S. asylums shortly after Sakel’s insulin treatment arrived, could be administered quickly and easily, with one physician able to treat fifty or more patients in a single morning. Although hailed as innovative in 1935, when Hungarian Ladislas von Meduna first announced its benefits, metrazol therapy was actually a remedy that could be traced back to the 1700s. European texts from that period tell of using camphor, an extract from the laurel bush, to induce seizures in the mad. Meduna was inspired to revisit this therapy by speculation, which wasn’t his alone, that epilepsy and schizophrenia were antagonistic to each other. One disease helped to drive out the other. Epileptics who developed schizophrenia appeared to have fewer seizures, while schizophrenics who suffered seizures saw their psychosis remit. If that was so, Meduna reasoned, perhaps he could deliberately induce epileptic seizures as a remedy for schizophrenia. “With faint hope and trembling desire,” he later recalled, “the inexpressible feeling arose in me that perhaps I could use this antagonism, if not for curative purposes, at least to arrest or modify the course of schizophrenia.” After testing various poisons in animal experiments, Meduna settled on camphor as the seizure-inducing drug of choice. On January 23, 1934, he injected it into a catatonic schizophrenic, and soon Meduna, like Klaesi and Sakel, was telling a captivating story of a life reborn. After a series of camphor-induced seizures, L. Z., a thirty-three year old man who had been hospitalized for four years, suddenly rose from his bed, alive and lucid, and asked the doctors how long he had been sick. It was a story of a miraculous rebirth, with L. Z. soon sent on his way home. Five other patients treated with camphor also quickly recovered, filling Meduna with a sense of great hope: “I feel elated and I knew I had discovered a new treatment. I felt happy beyond words.” As he honed his treatment, Meduna switched to metrazol, a synthetic preparation of camphor. His tally of successes rapidly grew: Of his first 110 patients, some who had been ill as long as ten years, metrazol-induced convulsions freed half from their psychosis. Although metrazol treatment quickly spread throughout European and American asylums, it did so under a cloud of great controversy. As other physicians tried it, they published recovery rates that were wildly different. One would find that it helped 70 percent of schizophrenic patients. The next wouldfind that it didn’t appear to be an effective treatment for schizophrenia at all but was useful for treating manic-depressive psychosis. Others would find it helped almost no one. Rockland State Hospital in New York announced that it didn’t produce a single recovery among 275 psychotic patients, perhaps the poorest reported outcome in all of psychiatric literature to that time. Was it a totally “dreadful” drug, as some doctors argued? Or was it, as one physician wrote, “the elixir of life to a hitherto doomed race?” A physician’s answer to that question depended, in large measure, on subjective values. Metrazol did change a person’s behavior and moods, and in fairly predictable ways. Physicians simply varied greatly in their beliefs about whether that change should be deemed an “improvement.” Their judgment was also colored by their own emotional response to administering it, as it involved forcing a violent treatment on utterly terrified patients. Quote: We act with both methods as with dynamite, endeavoring to blow asunder the pathological sequences and restore the diseased organism to normal functioning … beyond all doubt, from biological and therapeutic points of view, we are undertaking a violent onslaught with either method we choose, because at present nothing less than such a shock to the organism is powerful enough to break the chain of noxious processes that leads to schizophrenia. As with insulin, metrazol shock therapy needed to be administered multiple times to produce the desired lasting effect. A complete course of treatment might involve twenty, thirty, or forty or more injections of metrazol, which were typically given at a pace of two or three a week. To a certain degree, the trauma so inflicted also produced a change in behavior similar to that seen with insulin. As patients regained consciousness, they would be dazed and disoriented—Meduna described it as a “confused twilight state.” Vomiting and nausea were common. Many would beg doctors and nurses not to leave, calling for their mothers, wanting to “be hugged, kissed and petted.” Some would masturbate, some would become amorous toward the medical staff, and some would play with their own feces. All of this was seen as evidence of a desired regression to a childish level, of a “loss of control of the higher centres” of intelligence. Moreover, in this traumatized state, many “showed much greater friendliness, accessibility, and willingness to cooperate,” which was seen as evidence of their improvement. The hope was that with repeated treatments, such friendly, cooperative behavior would become more permanent. The lifting in mood experienced by many patients, possibly resulting from the release of stress-fighting hormones like epinephrine, led some physicians to find metrazol therapy particularly useful for manic-depressive psychosis. However, as patients recovered from the brain trauma, they typically slid back into agitated, psychotic states. Relapse with metrazol was even more problematic than with insulin therapy, leading numerous physicians to conclude that “metrazol shock therapy does not seem to produce permanent and lasting recovery.” Metrazol’s other shortcoming was that after a first injection, patients would invariably resist another and have to be forcibly treated. Asylum psychiatrists, writing in the American Journal of Psychiatry and other medical journals, described how patients would cry, plead that they “didn’t want to die,” and beg them “in the name of humanity” to stop the injections. Why, some patients would wail, did the hospital want to “kill” them? “Doctor,” one woman pitifully asked, “is there no cure for this treatment?” Even military men who had borne “with comparative fortitude and bravery the brunt of enemy action” were said to cower in terror at the prospect of a metrazol injection. One patient described it as akin to “being roasted alive in a white-hot furnace”; another “as if the skull bones were about to be rent open and the brain on the point of bursting through them.” The one theme common to nearly all patients, Katzenelbogen concluded in 1940, was a feeling “of being excessively frightened, tortured, and overwhelmed by fear of impending death.” The patients’ terror was so palpable that it led to speculation whether fear, as in the days of old, was the therapeutic agent. Said one doctor: Quote: Advocates of metrazol were naturally eager to distinguish it from the old barbaric shock practices and even conducted studies to prove that fear was not the healing agent. In their search for a scientific explanation, many put a Freudian spin on the healing psychology at work. One popular notion, discussed by Chicago psychotherapist Roy Grinker at an American Psychiatric Association meeting in 1942, was that it put the mentally ill through a near-death experience that was strangely liberating. “The patient,” Grinker said, “experiences the treatment as a sadistic punishing attack which satisfies his unconscious sense of guilt.” Abram Bennett, a psychiatrist at the University of Nebraska, suggested that a mental patient, by undergoing “the painful convulsive therapy,” has “proved himself willing to take punishment. His conscience is then freed, and he can allow himself to start life over again free from the compulsive pangs of conscience.” As can be seen by the physicians’ comments, metrazol created a new emotional tenor within asylum medicine. Physicians may have reasoned that terror, punishment, and physical pain were good for the mentally ill, but the mentally ill, unschooled in Freudian theories, saw it quite less abstractly. They now perceived themselves as confined in hospitals where doctors,rather than trying to comfort them, physically assaulted them in the most awful way. Doctors, in their eyes, became their torturers. Hospitals became places of torment. This was the beginning of a profound rift in the doctor-patient relationship in American psychiatry, one that put the severely mentally ill ever more at odds with society. Even though studies didn’t provide evidence of any long-term benefit, metrazol quickly became a staple of American medicine, with 70 percent of the nation’s hospitals using it by 1939. From 1936 to 1941, nearly 37,000 mentally ill patients underwent this treatment, which meant that they received multiple injections of the drug. “Brain-damaging therapeutics”—a term coined in 1941 by a proponent of such treatments—were now being regularly administered to the hospitalized mentally ill, and being done so against their will. —Robert Whitaker, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (2002), pp. 91–96. See also: What They Left Behind . -------------------- ~ Kindness is cheap. It's unkindness that always demands the highest price. Blogs: Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Recovery | Voices of Recovery | A Jungian Approach to Psychosis Edited by spiritualemerg (05/08/07 08:59 PM)
| |||||||
StickyWater Stranger Registered: 06/09/05 Posts: 1,680 |
| ||||||
Edited by StickyWater (04/29/08 01:08 PM)
| |||||||
Silversoul Rhizome Registered: 01/01/05 Posts: 23,576 Loc: The Barricades |
| ||||||
I miss Phluck.
--------------------
| |||||||
|
Shop: Kratom Capsules for Sale Kratom Powder For Sale Isolated Cubensis Liquid Culture For Sale Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order CBD Concentrates Bulk Substrate Buy Bali Kratom Powder |
|
Similar Threads | Poster | Views | Replies | Last post | ||
probably have schizophrenia or some shit ( 1 2 all ) |
Troll Bot | 6,766 | 28 | 11/06/14 08:05 AM by drkkenny | ||
Book on the psychiatry industry ( 1 2 all ) |
s240779 | 2,829 | 30 | 08/20/13 09:04 PM by MarkostheGnostic | ||
I may be schizophrenic ( 1 2 3 all ) |
godisamushroom | 4,340 | 48 | 02/18/13 09:46 AM by FishOilTheKid | ||
Parent has Schizophrenia Questions. ( 1 2 3 4 5 6 all ) |
UNDERdecoded | 7,567 | 112 | 10/31/14 06:33 PM by yogabunny | ||
am i developing schizophrenia. ( 1 2 all ) |
Anonymous | 4,420 | 32 | 12/22/13 05:25 PM by HappyHooligan | ||
Does Schizophrenia get better over-time? ( 1 2 all ) |
Bundy | 7,931 | 26 | 01/23/12 08:47 AM by cateyes | ||
My descent into schizophrenia ( 1 2 3 4 ... 10 11 all ) |
Rorge | 13,001 | 204 | 01/13/15 05:52 AM by Rorge | ||
Kids whom have Schizophrenic parent(s) ( 1 2 all ) |
Bundy | 1,658 | 26 | 02/21/12 04:04 PM by owls |
Extra information | ||
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled Moderator: CherryBom, Rose, mndfreeze, yogabunny, feevers, CookieCrumbs, Northerner 11,519 topic views. 0 members, 2 guests and 1 web crawlers are browsing this forum. [ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ] | ||